"Necessity is the mother of invention." - Plato
The saber-tooth curriculum is a great illustration of how rationalization destroys the creative process. In the beginning, the educational system in this story was developed out of necessity. Certain skills were necessary for survival in this tribe and thus were taught to the children. However, once those skills became obsolete, the people in power were quick to develop arguments about how these skills were "timeless." The danger in this piece of "logic" is that it cripples the society's ability to adapt education to coincide with changing external conditions.
As educators, it is imperative that we give our students a chance to learn skills and material that are relevant to theirs lives. In order to achieve this, we must allow ourselves to except ideas that we once thought were "radical" but have now become part of everyday life. With new technologies and new ways of life come different needs, interests, and processes that cannot be glossed over in an attempt to give our children a "timeless education." While there is value in learning classical topics, we must also prepare our students for the future. We cannot allow ourselves to educate our students the same way we were educated simply because it is the only system with which we are familiar.
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2 comments:
It is important to prepare all of our students for the future as well as today.
I believe that it is our duty as educators to prepare our students with the tools necessary to to be successful in the upcoming society. It may takes us more preparation or reading to keep up with the changes, but we must give our students the best opportunites. So if that means learning a new way to teach multiplication than the way we learned it than we must do it.
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